The Ineffable

by George Bilgere

I'm sitting here reading the paper,
feeling warm and satisfied, basically content
with my life and all I have achieved.
Then I go up for a refill and suddenly realize
how much happier I could be with the barista.
Late thirties, hennaed hair, an ahnk
or something tattooed on her ankle,
a little silver ring in her nostril.
There's some mystery surrounding why she's here,
pouring coffee and toasting bagels at her age.
But there's a lot of torsion when she walks,
which is interesting. I can sense right away
how it would all work out between us.

We'd get a loft in the artsy part of town,
and I can see how we'd look shopping together
at our favorite organic market
on a snowy winter Saturday,
snowflakes in our hair,
our arms full of leeks and shiitake mushrooms.
We would do tai chi in the park.
She'd be one of the few people
who actually "gets" my poetry
which I'd read to her in bed.
And I can see us making love, by candlelight,
Struggling to find words for the ineffable.
We never dreamed it could be like this.

And it would all be great, for many months,
until one day, unable to help myself,
I'd say something about that nostril ring.
Like, do you really need to wear that tonight
at Sarah and Mike's house, Sarah and Mike being
pediatricians who intimidate me slightly
with their patrician cool, and serious money.
And she would give me a look,
a certain lifting of the eyebrows
I can see she's capable of, and right there
that would be the end of the ineffable.

"The Ineffable" by George Bilgere, from The White Museum. © Autumn House Press, 2010.

Comment: Another poem I snagged from "The Writer's Almanac". I found this one amusing. And I love the word "ineffable". I don't know if I've ever used that word in a sentence! I'm going to use it now all the time. It's more poetic than "indescribable". I love that idea of imagining the lives of others, even though we don't have a clue, based on their clothes, their age, their professions. We can imagine a whole story about them without even talking to them like the narrator in the poem. He's already in love with her, in a relationship with her, and he's probably only ever said "thank you" to her. Not only that but he can imagine their love affair, but he can also portend its unfortunate demise.

I wrote a really bad short story with the same concept back in college. It was about how these strangers who drift in and out of our imagination can be very powerful and actually affect our lives. Do we imagine them because we are desperate for something more in our own lives? Do we create drama in our minds because we lack drama in real life? Is it just something to do? Or is there really a psychic connection that we so rarely act on. Like that person you happen to make eye contact with on the train and you wonder why you both were compelled to look and you wonder, what if? It's that ineffable connection.